Friends (24 page)

Second of October, 1876, last year, somebody who signed the book at a place called the Gem had scribbled a big letter J and then after it a D and S close together. Whoever it was had squiggled lines after them big letters, but it didn't look like any writing I had ever saw. To the right of that chicken scratchin', over in another little square, somebody else had writ the word half. And behind that was wrote
$9.50
in clear numbers. Nothing in the space for saying where you was from. Nothing in the room number box, either.

Of course, I figured the name could just as well be that of Whitey DuShane's brother or pa, whichever it was, as that of someone else. Might be, but there was no way I could be sure. Other names in the book had seventeen or sixteen dollars marked down after them, so I thought maybe the one-half was for half rent. Sure enough, six pages earlier, and writ a lot plainer, was Whitey DuShane's name, clear as day. They shared room 12 and took no meals there. On the spot for saying where you hailed from, Whitey DuShane had wrote
Elsewheres.

I went back and studied a long time on that scratching made by Whitey's kin, the letter J and the wavy lines that followed it, what was supposed to be our man's first name-even got a Ioupe from Bullock's top desk drawer and looked through that. The longer I looked, the surer I was that the man who'd writ that couldn't read or write-not even his own name. Oh, he knowed his initials all right-them big letters-only the rest of it was pretend writing, such as a kid will do.

When I leaned back in Seth Bullock's stuffed chair, it felt like Stalking Bear was standing across the room watching me, with pleasure in his eyes, like he done the few times I learned something right. The sign wasn't hoofprints in mud, but them ink marks on paper led just as clear to a den DuShane'd holed up in once, one he would likely go back to. And I was on his trail again.

But there was no use tryin' to puzzle out what was never wrote there. I propped my feet up on Bullock's polished oak desk and pulled my hat down over my eyes.

I was just starting to get comfortable when a pair of sheriffs come in the door.

"Damn, Willie, I never saw you sleeping on the job before," Clete yelled at me, coming over to the desk. "You practicing up being the rich sheriff of a gold town sitting there?" He had some liquor in him. The words spilling out of his mouth wasn't exactly wobbly, but they had the sharp edges wore off them, all right.

"I'm not asleep," I told him. "Just restin' my eyes after finding what I found. Look here." I showed him the names and explained what I put together.

Bullock come behind us and had a look too. "The Gem is where he stayed, huh? I might have guessed that." Bullock looked me up and down then. "That's mighty good work, Deputy. What did you say your name was?"

I told him.

He nodded his head, picked up one of the hotel books and then walked over close to the cupboard where he kept them. He waited a minute and then motioned me over to join him. I thought he was going to have me look at something else over there, but instead he spoke low so Clete, who was still bent over them names, couldn't hear. "I could use a man of your talents, Mr. Goodwin, and the pay is $125 a month. Probably a lot better than you're making up in Two Strike. I could get you a free room, too, and most of your meals."

"Two
Scalp
," I corrected him. I looked over at Clete, but I guess he had drunk a little too much to be paying attention good … And no thanks, all the same. Deputying is just something I'm doin' for now. I'd have myself shot in a week if I followed the peacekeeping trade in this town. Besides, me and Clete has other plans. Least we did have."

Bullock smiled and patted me on the back. "I understand. Don't want to leave your friend out on a limb, right?"

I didn't know what to say to that.

"Well, I didn't expect you'd be interested, but it was worth a try. Damn hard finding good men these days." Bullock walked back to Clete and looked over his shoulder. "If he's in town now, it's likely he'll go to the Gem again, Shannon. I think you and I ought to walk down there and see Mr. AI Swearington, the current owner and whore master of that establishment."

Bullock sounded pretty uppity when he said that last, but I didn't understand how he could see himself any different than the man he was talking about, only on a smaller scale. Didn't seem to strike him that way, though, for he set his hat back on, using his mirror again, and started for the door like he was on an errand of justice.

"DuShane bunked at a dove cage?" Clete ask.

"Well, it's a hotel, a saloon and a whorehouse all rolled into one," Bullock said, turning back and waiting for Clete. "They have stage acts and other sorts of shows too. Something to suit every vice and human depravity-so I hear tell. So long as no one complains or gets killed, I let them alone."

I stood up and followed them out. Sam, Bullock's deputy, was in the outside office, and after he give Clete a hard look, he listened close to what Bullock wanted him to do-to check all the new hotel registration books in town except the one at the Gem. Him and Clete would do that themselves.

It was clear dark by then, but the street was lit up from the windows of all the buildings along it.

I walked beside Clete, told him where our hotel was and give him his key. "While you and Bullock are talking to the man at the whorehouse, I got someone to see myself. Some gal I met today is asking folks she knows about DuShane. I paid her to."

"Yeah, you probably paid her all right, but not to tell you about DuShane, I'll bet," Clete said, a big sloppy grin on his face.

Bullock laughed on that.

"That's not how it is," I told them. "But if the chance for it knocks on the door, I'll be standing there ready to open 'er up wide."

Clete laughed too. "By God, I believe you will be, Willie." Deadwood had got pretty noisy again, lots of miners in the street hoo-rayin' and singin'. A fat man was sharing a bottle with a couple of his friends, but he put it away when he seen the sheriff come swaggering down the walkway with a couple of mean-looking hombres in tow-meanin' Clete and me. A man wearing a big white apron standing outside a place to eat, he collared Bullock. Clete and me stood in the street and waited for him.

The smells coming out the door made me hungrier than a bear in spring. "Pretty important fellah, this Sheriff Seth Bullock. Quite a man," I observed.

"Yeah, if you don't take into consideration how he likes to pass around his upstairs woman. Probably watches her doing it, too. But from another room, I'd guess."

"I don't know nothing about them things," I told him. "I do know that he offered me a job not more than ten minutes ago-deputy job, I reckon."

Clete looked up at me pretty taken back, then over at Bullock. "Why, that sneaky sonofabitch!" Then he laughed again and turned to me. "Well, are you going to take it?"

I couldn't believe he ask me that. "Why, of
course
I'm going to take it! Hell, next year I'll probly run for mayor of this place."

After a time he turned and said, "You might be better off, my friend." I seen then that he was just looking out for me. "I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't quit me 'til after we get DuShane. You've a better head for this tracking business than I do. I doubt I'd have got this far on my own."

That damn Clete! Why, he could insult a man half crazy one minute and flatter him red-faced the next and never know he done neither.

"Last I heard," I told him, "we was heading for Texas after locking this DuShane up. Maybe hang around Two Scalp 'til they hang him and then head south. Maybe your being spoke for changes that, I don't know."

Clete shook his head. "I don't know what to say, Willie. One day I'm going to marry her and the next day I just want to take off. Hell, it'd be hot in Texas right now."

"Yeah, and it would be pretty hot in Two Scalp, too, if you was to tell Mary you wasn't marrying her."

Clete shook his head some more.

After a while Bullock come over to us. "Some people can't take a shit without asking me how to," he said. "Are we ready to go, gentlemen?"

"You two go on. I'm going in this here cafe and eat," I said. "And then rn go talk to that woman at that Red Bird place. After that, I'm turnin' in. Not much sleep last night and I'm about wore down to the nubs."

They went on down the street and I stepped inside and then sat at a little table by myself. I ask the gal for the biggest beefsteak they had and it wasn't long 'til she brought it, overlapping the plate all around, a big mountain of mashed potatoes piled on top of it and everything covered over with gravy.

DuShane stood at the bar in a noisy crowd of miners and whores, sipping his founh whiskey. He didn't usually like feeling drunk, but tonight he was letting himself go a little. For weeks that goddamn sheriff had been after him, but now DuShane knew he had slipped him. No matter how good a tracker he was, and he was back-home good, DuShane was certain no one could follow him all the way up the Deadwood road. True, he hadn't shot the man who'd killed Whitey, but he was out of danger now, at least. Maybe later he could figure a way to take care of that bastard Shannon.

Towns always sickened him after a while, but tonight it felt good to be where men were getting falling-down, vomiting drunk and women were plying their trade, though none had come up to him as yet. He
had
been trying to catch the eye of the youngest, smallest whore in the place, but the perky little brunette was already getting more attention than she knew what to do with. She reminded him of his cousin Rachel, and he
had
always wanted a go-around with her back when he was a sapling.

He
had
lifted his glass high to drain it when he looked across the room and froze.

He recognized Seth Bullock right away and almost as quickly saw that the tall man with him was Clete Shannon. DuShane stood rigid as a corpse as the two lawmen approached the bar and then spoke to the man behind it. Slowly, he put his glass down and lowered his head, pulling his hat down further over his face. He glanced up and saw that Shannon
was
looking over everyone in the place,
and
DuShane knew who he was looking for. Bullock told the barman to go get Al.

DuShane thought about drawing his gun and killing them both where they stood. He might get Shannon, but then there'd be Bullock. Instead, he turned slow and walked toward the back door. The fear grew big as a mountain as soon as he turned his back. Every second he expected to hear the blast of a heavy handgun
and
feel the lead ball tear into his spine. But he fought himself to keep from running 'til he
was
through the door, and then he gimped
up
the alley as fast as his long, lean legs would carry him, his gun slapping against his thigh.

When he got to a narrow cross street, he turned and looked back, his big Army Colt shaking in his left hand. Nobody had come after him.
If
AI was going to tell on him, they'd be on him
by
now. Slowly he went back down the alley and when he got to the Gem, opened the back door just a crack so he could look in. AI was still talking with Bullock and Shannon and it sounded like an argument. Du-Shane drew his gun and had the barrel through the crack before he changed his mind. He holstered it and went around the side of the building to the front and then walked quickly across the street. He sat on a bench outside the undertakers, beside two loafers,
and
waited for Shannon to come out of the Gem.

He'd follow his man, get him alone, and take him when he didn't expect it.

That beefsteak was all I had room for, but I eat a big wedge of apple pie anyway.

When I stepped back outside, everything seemed a lot friendlier than when I had went in. The Red Bird wasn't but a block on down the street. Still a big crowd in there, but I didn't see Bessie nowheres. The barman come and poured me a rye and I ask him if he'd seen the lady I was looking for. He told me she'd gone out with a customer a little while ago and would probly be back soon. He kept pointing out other gals I might like and couldn't get it through his head that none but Bessie would do. Ten minutes later she come struttin' in, looked around and saw me, and after poking her head toward the door, stepped back outside. I killed the rest of my rye and followed her.

She was off down the sidewalk a piece, standing in the shadows and looking nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

"You coulda got me killed, you sonofabitch," she said, first words out of her mouth when I come up. "Seeing as who he is and what he's done, I figure you owe me five dollars more for what I found out."

"The way I see it, I already paid," I told her.

"Goddamn you," she said, real pissed off, but after a minute and me not saying anything she calmed down. "All right, he's in Deadwood. Got back yesterday, he was here before. You stay away from this bastard if you know what's good for you, though I doubt you do. He'd sooner slit somebody's throat than fuck, and I'm not messin' in this anymore, I mean it. I don't know where he is right now and I ain't askin' around no more, either, not for all the gold in these Hills."

"Did you get his name, his first name?" I ask.

She looked kinda sideways at me. "I sure did, Sugar, but it'll cost you that other five to find
that
out." She cocked her big hip out to the side, waiting on me to come across.

I fished in my pocket and pulled out my pouch. "This better be right," I told her, handing her the coin.

"Oh, it's right, all right," she said, popping my half eagle into her bag like she done with the one that afternoon. "His name's Jezrael. Jezrael DuShane, and he's one of the meanest sonsabitches you're likely to run into. And don't go calling him Jez or Jess when you catch up to him, either. A friend of mine made that mistake last year, and he cut her face up so bad she hadda get out of the trade and get married. Now I want nothing more to do with either him
or
you," she said. "Unless, of course, you'd like a quick-" She stopped and looked up and down the street.